>There's simply no way around the math other than increasing the retirement age. If you go back 50 or 100 years, people didn't sit around for 20 or 30 years after retiring doing nothing - they simply died earlier. So if you're going to live until 80 or 90, you'd better work until at least 75.
That works out mathematically, but it's not going to work in practice. Just because you don't die before you're 90 doesn't mean you can work any longer than your grandparents did, even assuming somebody still wants to employ you.
>Why not? People are healthier than ever before...
There's no evidence this is true. You realize in the US 30% of the population is obese and almost 10% of us have diabetes, right?
>...and are working jobs that require much less physical endurance.
Right, because sitting at a desk for forty years is the key to good health.
>Again, if you're living longer, your usefulness is decaying at a slower rate.
And again, there's no reason to believe this is true. Modern medicine isn't the panacea you seem to think it is, and the fact that your heart doesn't stop beating doesn't mean you're still in shape to work.
Even aside from physical maladies (which is a big aside), it's normal to be a bit forgetful when you're seventy purely through age-related cognitive decline. It doesn't matter much if you spend your days puttering around the house, but if someone is paying you to do a job the situation is different.
Maybe before the money runs out we'll see enough medical advances to make working to 75 doable for the average person, but without those advances that's just not going to happen.
You realize in the US 30% of the population is obese and almost 10% of us have diabetes, right?
A couple of points worth making:
1) 10% of people have diabetes because the definition of "diabetes" has been tinkered with extensively over the last couple of generations. Blood sugar levels that wouldn't have resulted in a diagnosis in the 1950s are now grounds for panic in your doctor's office. I'm not qualified to judge this as a good thing or a bad thing, overall, but it's obvious that it renders basic statistical comparisons impossible. We've seen similar abuse of statistics with other conditions such as autism.
2) If people are heavier now than we were in the past, it could be for the same reason that we're taller than our ancestors: better nutrition (as opposed to the usual claim of worse nutrition.)
> You realize in the US 30% of the population is obese and almost 10% of us have diabetes, right?
Those people are probably going to die at 60-70 y/o anyway.
And besides, that's self-inflicted. Once people realize that it's preventing them from reaching their full lifespan, they'll change if they want to. And if they don't, well, I'm not gonna complain if I get better retirement benefits as a result.
> Right, because sitting at a desk for forty years is the key to good health.
Once again, this is largely self-inflicted. You can stay relatively healthy while working a desk job. Stop buying junk food and get a gym membership. Try getting up and walking a bit during your workday - take a stroll outside during lunch. You can certainly be healthier than people were 50 years ago working at a car factory.
> And again, there's no reason to believe this is true.
There's no reason to believe it isn't true. Society has just accepted that people have to stop working at 65. Why not try increasing the retirement age gradually and see what happens? People don't suddenly lose the ability to work when they turn 65.
>Those people are probably going to die at 60-70 y/o anyway.
Maybe, though doctors are getting pretty good at treating obesity-related problems. In any event they're going retire in their fifties (or earlier), so from a social services standpoint we're not coming out ahead.
> You can stay relatively healthy while working a desk job.
The key word being relatively. Taking a walk at lunch and spending an hour at the gym isn't going to make you as healthy as someone who does physical activity all day.
>There's no reason to believe it isn't true. Society has just accepted that people have to stop working at 65.
Actually, yes, there is a reason to believe it isn't true. We have made effectively zero progress in arresting age-related cognitive decline. Until we do you can raise the retirement age to whatever you want - even people who are still pretty sharp aren't going to be able to find jobs because employers won't want to chance hiring a madogiwa.
I would suspect that there is quite a high variability in capability and survival prospects at age 70. The ones least able to be likely to afford to retire might be those that need to the most.
I don't have a particular solution to offer but looking at averages oversimplifies issues like this.
That works out mathematically, but it's not going to work in practice. Just because you don't die before you're 90 doesn't mean you can work any longer than your grandparents did, even assuming somebody still wants to employ you.